Turkey alert to Kurdish mobilization in northern Syria

ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkey is alert to the situation in Syria's northern bordering area, whose three districts were seized by of the Democratic Union of Kurdistan (PYD), an affiliate of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).

Turkish ministers held a security meeting on Wednesday to discuss possible developments in Turkish-Syrian border area, which aroused concerns of Ankara over the potential expansion of the Kurdish-controlled area in northern Syria and establishment of another front for the PKK in its attacks against Turkey.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, took up arms in 1984 in an attempt to create an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey. Since then over 40,000 people have been killed in conflicts involving the group.

The Syrian administration "left the (bordering) region to the PYD to reinforce its troops in the center of the country for clashes with the Free Syrian Army and to intimidate Turkey," Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News reported, quoting Turkish sources.

The PYD has gotten hold of three Syrian towns, including Kobane and Efrin in Aleppo and Amude in the city of al-Hasakah, all adjacent to the Turkish border.

Saleh Muslim Mohamed, leader of PYD told Turkey's Daily Aksam that "We have enhanced control of Kurdish districts in order to maintain security of Syrian Kurds... It cannot be said that ( Syrian President Bashar) al-Assad has given support to us. In fact, time to time we had clashes with the Syrian forces,"

"But it was a reality that al-Assad was not in full resistance against the PYD," he added.

"Turkey's concerns about autonomy of Syrian Kurds are groundless," Mohamed noted, adding they had sympathy to Turkish people.

"We do not have organic relations with the PKK. But it's natural to have ideological and philosophical proximity," the PYD leader noted.

Turkey transferred more troops to the Syrian border and deployed surface-to-air missiles on the border as part of military measures, after a Turkish jet was downed by the Syrian forces on June 22.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held a meeting with Abdulbasid Seyda, head of the Syrian National Council (SNC), and discussed concerns about the Syrian Kurds. With a Kurdish origin himself, Seyda said "the Kurdish groups were on the side of the revolution."

"The Syrian regime has handed over the region to the PKK or the PYD. The Kurdish people are not on the side of these two groups, but on the side of the revolution," Seyda told reporters on after the meeting.

On the other hand, Kurdish Regional Administration in northern Iraq trained the Syrian Kurdish soldiers, who would then be sent to Syria to fill a "security vacuum," Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish semi-autonomous region, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera on Monday.

"A number of the young Kurds who fled to there have been trained. We do not want to directly interfere in the situation, but they have been trained," said the Iraqi Kurdish leader.

Barzani said the fighting force of Syrian Kurds would take its orders from a new high committee formed two weeks ago when two major Kurdish opposition groups put aside their differences in a meeting in Arbil of northern Iraq.